Nevermind.
Neverminded.
I’d like to point out that laws have been requiring Catholic-affiliated employers to cover birth control for many years before Obama took office. Only when Obama started to do it did it become a “freedom of religion” issue.
Anyone surprised?
Seriously, is there really NOTHING else in your life that you could be doing? No books to read, no closets to clean out, no hobbies or painting to do?
My guess is that you’re doing what I’m doing: posting while books and household tasks pile up. Well, guess what? I’ve had enough. adaher has pushed me over the edge… into sanity. I’m going to go do something with my life.
'Bye for now!
(See y’all after I’ve spent a few days doing Real Stuff)
Yeah, because Cardinal Dolan is such a Republican hack. And you’re quoting a state law.
Funny, I recall once hearing a conservative saying that freedom of the press only applies to people who own a press…
It was a 9-0 decision, and I don’t disagree with the court’s decision. But I don’t think you can characterize the EEOC’s position as “attacking freedom of religion”. The case was regarding who qualified under the ministerial exemption to the ADA. It was just a just a technical interpretation of existing language and not an attack on religious freedom per se.
I had the impression at the time I first heard about the decision that the school should have been held to an obligation to notify Ms Perich at the time she chose to enroll in the training that qualified her for the position she had been in that successful completion of the training and acceptance of the position would constitute her entry into the ministry.
Especially in the case of a church that does not accept the ordination of women (Hosanna-Tabor is affiliated with the Missouri Synod, but I can’t find a specific reference to that congregation’s position on the issue). It’s never been made clear to me whether the church/school did that at the time. Or whether the point was ever brought up at trial.
For this reason, I’ve never felt I got enough background on the Hoanna-Tabor v EEOC case.
It’s not an attack on religious freedom at all, at least as it is understood in the modern era. The ministerial exception is a judge-written exception to the plain language of Title VII. Moreover, it’s an exception created before Scalia wrote Employment Division v. Smith, which held that everyone is subject to valid and neutral law of general applicability regardless of religion. Challenging the continued applicability of the exception post-Smith was not at all an overreaching position.
Indeed, the Court upheld the exception by stating, “[A] church’s selection of its ministers is unlike an individual’s ingestion of peyote. Smith involved government regulation of only outward physical acts. The present case, in contrast, concerns government interference with an internal church decision that affects the faith and mission of the church itself.” That’s pretty bad reasoning when you get right down to it. Characterizing the peyote ingestion in native american religion as “only outward physical acts,” is like saying the Eucharist is just an outward physical act.
So characterizing the Obama administration’s position–which followed the Bush administration’s position-- as an attack on religious liberty is pretty silly, and just underscores that this a political cudgel, not a genuinely felt philosophical concern. I don’t see any outrage in right-wing circles over laws banning Jews and Muslims from enforcing religious marriage contracts, for example. Quite the opposite, the impetus for such bans seems to be coming from the right-wing.
The administration is denying the Kochs and Sheldon Adelson freedom of speech? Um, what?